Unpacking sectoral trends in female employment in India

Abstract

The trend of declining female workforce participation in India is well known. Supply- and demand-side explanations have been put forward to explain this. This chapter attempts to take forward the discussion on women’s workforce participation by looking at the sectoral trends of women’s employment. It is found that although WFPR is declining, the sectors in which women are concentrated continue to be agriculture, home-based manufacturing, education and health. There is also a gender-based occupational hierarchy in all sectors. Such patterns of gender segregation of occupations can be understood better if they are examined within the framework of the continuum of paid and unpaid work burdens that women face. Furthermore, the barriers for women entering the labour force differ from one sector to another. While lack of skills poses a barrier for entry for women into some of the newly emerging sectors, other aspects, including social norms around work that women can do (affected also by general safety during commute and at the workplace) as well as the ability to balance the burden of domestic and care work responsibilities, play an important role in determining women’s participation across sectors. This chapter concludes that whether it is non-traditional or traditional work, some of the limiting factors to women’s participation in paid work are related to the inflexibility and burden of unpaid work.